That it's not just what you say, it's also how much you talk about it.

[NicolaHare]

Surprise, another trans thread! But the dynamics of online spaces fascinates me.

Take MWR. Some stats. Feminism Chat has been active since 2010. At this moment 364 pages of threads have been generated. 144 of those pages contain threads that were created or active since January this year. At the beginning of 2018 a significant portion of threads were trans themed and these threads tended to contain the most posts, and the board has only grown more fixated with the topic since then. You have to go quite a ways back to find a page of threads that isn’t 90-95% to do with trans people.

Nowhere else on the site is so obsessed. For example: on the LGBT themed boards you only have to go back 1 or 2 pages to find threads from 2017 and earlier. There aren’t any trans threads in the 1 and a fraction page of threads from 2018 on the politics board. There are, I think, about 2 in the half dozen pages of threads from this year in the currents affairs and news forum. And in 2018, all the education forums combined have generated about 5 trans threads.

This is weird, right? Why is a general feminism board with an overwhelmingly non trans userbase so fixated on a group of people they don't belong to and the issues surrounding them? It would be weird regardless of what anyone in any thread had to say on the subject.

Not surprising, though. Trans sceptical feminism ironically almost always ends up focusing on the transgender question to the exclusion of all other topics that its proponents believe that trans inclusive feminisms are neglecting, and so neglects them to an even greater degree. Honestly, I’m sceptical that they are being neglected at all: it seems to me that conversations about pregnancy, menstruation ect are happening in public view at far greater volume than ever before, taboos surrounding bodily functions are increasingly discarded by the discourse and pop culture, and that when we talk about erasure we’re actually quibbling about terminology, the trappings of language and not the substance of the conversation. To assign a motivation to the common theme on feminism chat of “We are being silenced elsewhere!” a significant part of it might be the catharsis of imagined persecution. “We are saying the truths THEY don’t want you to hear! We are rebels!”

(This interview with a former gender critical trans woman is worth reading. It’s American and several years old, but it describes the many of the other toxic intellectual cul-de-sacs you can observe in MWR. www.transadvocate.com/is-sadism-popular-with-terfs-a-chat-with-an-ex-gendercrit_n_18568.htm)

But to set aside the discussion of substance. Do you think that the mere volume of trans threads in feminism chat is indicative of a kind of transphobia? If it were a forum of straight people talking about nothing but same sex attracted people, even if what they had to say was positive would we not be inclined to see in it's users a troubling insecurity with regards to queerness. If it were a forum of white people talking about nothing but people of colour in the most effusive terms, would we take this at face value or would we assign sinister motives (as the resonance of Get Out suggests many would)?

I think Nicola is struggling to understand what happened there eresh

Probably wasnt here when it all kicked off

So gay people aren't who they claim to be. How is this not homophobic?

Men claim to be lesbians.
But that's apparently not homophobic...

And yes I do believe there are lots of people claiming to be gay who aren't.

Like the guy I know who applied to get into the police because he ticked the gay box, as they were not recruiting straight white men at the time and were trying to improve diversity.

He got in BTW.

I'm not sure how that pans out in the long term on a practical level.

Lovely guy. Economic with the truth. And most definitely straight. His FB is a bit of a giveaway.

I don't think it's homophobic to acknowledge its happening and state that not everyone who identifies as something, is necessarily telling the truth.

Human in telling a lie shocker.

Nicola, it's not about who did it first. It's about it not being our decision at all. Don't whine at me about not being able to call me names I don't like and that don't fit me because while I don't like them, I didn't get them banned and I wouldn't have either.

If someone arrives and starts using homophobic language with gay abandon (cant help myself), might that person simply be goading posters to quote so that posts can be screenshot as part of a campaign against mn? Not that i m for a moment suggesting that there is such a campaign or that the use of such language is anything other than an insight into a genuinely homophobic mind.

If lesbians called themselves pufferfish, there will be males saying that cispufferfish are mean and exclusive.

So gay people aren't who they claim to be.

Somebody who desires only sexual relationships with people of the opposite sex is not gay.

Good point MrsWooster

Lesbians can't be pufferfish. Even that's loaded with euphemism.

How about lesbians can be lesbians? You know the purely homosexual type of lesbian.

Novel thought. Powerful use of language. Communicates meaning in a narrow yet well and widely understood fashion to a wide number of people. Without the need to clarification.

Maybe not so stunning and brave nor fashionable.

Why ARE worrying about whether the word lesbian is fashionable again? Remind me, why it's important to identity.

You are either a lesbian or you are not. Same way as you are either a woman or your not.

Why is image coming into the discourse of your sexual orientation at all?

Yeah come on NicolaHare WHY does lesbian need cis in front of it and gay man need no cis qualifier?

I am not cis, I neither need, want nor accept any qualifier in front of the word woman which I use to describe myself and, no, I do not respect or accept your desire to refer to me using that illogical,
dehumanising terminology which is used purely as a means of re-defining me into a inferior subcategory of the class I was born into.

On the subject of respecting someone's right to use certain terms - how about respect for the rights of women to describe themselves and their biological functions as they see fit?

Just a bit of light relief from the brilliant Dr Jane Clare Jones

https://janeclarejones.com/2018/11/13/the-annals-of-the-terf-wars/amp/?twitterr_impression=true

Very relevant to this thread I think! OP, you like a provocateur, you might enjoy it too!

damn it, was just coming the post the terf wars thing!

Lesbians can't be pufferfish

Ah, but if the definition of pufferfish were adult human female homosexual, there would be men demanding to called pufferfish too, and screaming about cispufferfish demanding an exclusive and hurtful club.

Never mind what pufferfish lesbian actually means. It's a definition that applies to women, ergo it must be "wrong".

My word. I now have the entire feminist/transactivist discourse playing out in my head between Cartman and the Principle of the school who keeps telling that girl to shut up. It's a marvellous way to round out the day.

I read as much of the suggested essay as I could manage, got to the dowdy lesbian bit and decided life was too short for more inept postmodern bullshit. And I say this as someone who has read Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva.

This dismissal of older women is a constant in the discourse of TRA, at the same time insisting that the world should revolve around their inner-belief, while simultaneously dismissing the experience of women as less real.

Mind you, there was occasion for some unexpected hilarity.

From Andrea Long Chu’s bio.

“Her essay "On Liking Women" for n+1 has been hailed by Sandy Stone as launching "the second wave" of trans studies.”

Anyone who is familiar with Barry Humphries’ work might remember Sandy Stone, surely an informed critic of trans studies. Sandy Stone is a favourite of Germaine Greer as well. Sadly, I have never come across Germaine Bunbury’s opinion of Barry’s body of work.

I don't know why I'm bothering, and the convo has moved on - I'm only on pg 6 - but 1. My 19 yr old calls herself a lesbian, why wouldn't she ? What horrible ageism in saying it's 'out of date'. 2. My 'exploring, might be gay, Mum' 14 yr old says 'queer is a slur, I don't use it'. So fuck off, OP, with articles that try to make out everyone under 25 is all down with the queer, and only old fuddie duddies can bear to say the words 'lesbian' and 'gay'.

Look. It's pretty obvious OP has been educated beyond her intelligence.

The kindest thing would be to not engage.

Oh, I see that NicolaHare hasn't provided a definition of 'woman'

Nicola, you want to come over all academic. It's usual for academics to be able to to define the terms they use, particularly when they're using them in a non standard way. You're asking us to accept a very different definition of 'woman' to that held in every dictionary (apart from woke online ones).

It's reasonable to expect you to be able to justify that.

and setting reading tasks then not engaging with other posters. Rather, apparently, expecting us to sit at your feet and be educated?

1. not cool
2. rather familiar

@NicolaHare: Juat de-lurking to let you know that when someone suggested you read Nussbaum’s take-down of Judith Butler, they were referring to American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, not Emily Nussbaum.

This is like talking about chemical reactions and syntheses with someone who can‘t be arsed to bother with acknowledging that the periodic table is a thing, let alone acknowledge that you need to universally define what a carbon is and what an oxygen and a hydrogen, in order to be able to talk organic chemistry.

Would you object to a cisgender lesbian making the same comment,*

OP, the problem with carefully constructed language to serve your own ends is that it crumbles at the flick of a finger when exposed to reality.

'Cis' being applied to humans is a made up term meaning one's gender aligns with one's sex. That society's expectations of role and behaviour corresponds to the sex it assigns them. Lesbians are therefore, by definition, gender non-conforming.

'Cis lesbian' being applied to a woman is a contradiction in terms. Their sex does not align with society's expectations of it.

According to Blanchard's typology (and everyone's experience) heterosexual men identifying as women are largely cross dressing or AGP. They have a fetish. A specifically male one, at that. Cross dressing is so common it's almost a cliche.

Men have been demanding the attention of, and access to, lesbians since the beginning of time. The concept of sex without involving a penis appears to be an affront and something to be corrected. Getting validation at the same time is the irresistible icing on the cake.

Men claiming they are lesbians, coercing women into sex, demanding validation and vilifying those who disagree = stereotypical male behaviour. They couldn't be more 'cis' if they tried.

Mangling language to obscure motive will only work if you can force people to comply. And only then if you've gone to town with the brain washing first.

And it doesn't alter the reality.

PS terf and cis were banned, as was TIM and misgendering. No-one wanted it. There was uproar. It was forced by TRAs who demanded compliance with their censorship but hadn't counted on MNHQ being even handed.

they were referring to American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, not Emily Nussbaum.

Fair cop. Bit of a brain belch there. The quote I give is her’s though.

Oh, I see that NicolaHare hasn't provided a definition of 'woman'

I did earlier, via citation: plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/

I’m not sure what trans inclusive definition of woman or manhood I could give that would satisfy you. You seem totally and intractably sceptical of the idea that trans women can ever be woman and trans men can ever be men. You pre-emptively dismiss any definition that allows such a thing as “woke” or pomo nonsense. This is what Aofie observes as “eliding over a very broad scholarly conversation about sex and gender in society”

But, you may say, we hold that a trans exclusionary definition of womanhood is most useful to conceptualise ourselves and act on to change society. To which survey the forum again, note that it’s entirely non-transgender userbase has spent the entire #metoo era talking about nothing but trans people, and think: if this is feminism it's a fairly useless, sort of sad and pretty creepy one. I agree with Aofie's observation of contemporary Gender Critical feminism. “A masterplan not to dismantle gender as ideology and material affect, but to deny “transition” or self-determination as crimes against the ministry of truth.”

One thing OP could meaningfully answer irrespective of OP‘s inability to define words:
OP, do you advocate for MNHQ lifting all censorship that was introduced courtesy TRA lobbying, which would extend to words like TIM and calling males ‚he‘ even if they identify as ‚she‘, or would you just like to have censorship tailor-made for your purposes?

Nicola
What's the difference between a man and a woman?